The Knock – A Short Story and Flash Fiction Fun

The problem writing non-fiction full-time, particularly when it is geared around a very narrow set of keywords, is that occasionally you feel as if you’ve run out of ways to explain a topic differently than you had the week before. You start feeling redundant, and possibly a little uninspired.

The fact of the matter is, you are totally being redundant, but that’s kind of the point. You have to keep in mind that the person visiting those sites or reading those types of articles are typically are looking for an answer to their question and are only visiting you for a short time. Lots and lots of articles on the same thing can help increase your rank and makes your content more likely to reach those in need of answers.

Therefore, you do what you have to do, but that doesn’t mean you can’t also indulge in a little bit of creative writing fun. That being said, I decided this week to make use of some random story generators I found online. The following is the result.

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She knelt on the carpet in her new living-room, a big cardboard box in front of her, unwrapping ornaments, photographs, and other mementos. The fan overhead rattled as it spun. She’d congratulated herself after installing it earlier that morning, with a mimosa, celebrating the fact she hadn’t called her parents a single time, or worse, her ex-boyfriend. The last thing she needed was to give him an excuse to work his way back into her life.

Unfortunately, she had to concede she hadn’t spent long enough verifying its blades were balanced before turning it on. She made a mental note to add fixing that to the ever-growing to-do list.

There was a knock at the door. She jumped. Most of her possessions were still packed away in boxes, so the knock had resulted in an echoing boom. She had no more than taken two steps when the knock sounded a second time.

“I’m coming,” she called out. “Coming.”

She was just about to open the door when she thought it might be better to first see who her visitor might be through the peephole instead. The breezeway on the other side of the door appeared empty.

Guess they had the wrong apartment, she thought, returning to her labor. She knelt beside the box of ornaments and pulled out a figurine of a dancing girl her grandmother had gifted her on her sixteenth birthday. She held it up, loving how the light shining through the glass made patterns on the room’s freshly installed carpets. Holding the figurine in her hand, she dug through the box, looking for its hook so that she might hang it next to the apartment’s kitchen window.

The boom of a heavy-handed knock on the door startled her again. She gently placed the dancer on the box and returned to the front door, but once again the breezeway on the other side appeared empty.

She pursed her lips. She’d several kids playing ball down the street the day before as she’d begun moving in. They must have decided to play a prank on her. Opening the door a crack, she shouted, “go home.”

Her eye caught the box of juice on the kitchen countertop. She frowned. She must have forgotten to put it away after making her drink earlier. She glanced back at the door and shrugged. “Why not?” She poured herself a second drink that was more champagne than juice and raised her glass. “Here’s to the next chapter,” she said out loud. She tipped the glass back and draining its contents. The combination of pulp and bubbles tickled her tongue.

She took a step toward the main room and bumped into the wall. She giggled. “I made that drink too strong.”

She stepped on the carpet, loving how its plush weave surrounded her toes. Another round of knocking boomed from the front door, this time even louder and more insistent. She turned her head and shouted, “go away, whoever you are.” Her ears detected the sound of a siren in the distance. Good, she thought, maybe someone else got tired of those kids and called in a complaint.

She returned to the box of ornaments. The room began to spin. Yeah, that drink was way too strong. Lesson learned. She sat down in an attempt to reclaim her equilibrium, but the dizziness increased. She looked for something to center her gaze on.

Only then did she realize the figurine was gone.